No place to call Home
by mixster
Summary: Moping around his room at Privet Drive after the tragic events at the Ministry of Magic, Harry is surprised to find a mysterious book from Luna appear unnoticed. Finding out why leaves him disbelieving, then magic takes him to another reality.


Harry starred at the mirror, switching between the crack and the eerie shadows that whispered behind it. His fingers softly traced the wound, the rough edges pulling at his skin.

"Why can't I stop thinking of what I should've done?" he quietly asked. "I was screwing up so badly long before you... Why didn't I see it? Why didn't I listen?"

Bringing his hand to his lips, he wetted his thumb and cleaned off a smudge.

"The stone, the snake, the rat... They weren't ideal, but no one died... What was different?"

He caught his eyes through the fog that had lived in the glass since its partner's destruction.

Shifting his free hand to the desk, he ran his finger along the sentences, his useless guesses. "_Wormtail free... Death Eaters in public..._"

The smooth movements became shaky as his eyes started darting back to the mirror.

"I had a chance to get away, didn't I? A chance at." He paused to snort. "A normal life. Love, laughter, all that... Now I have no place to call home. Well, I probably won't."

His eyebrows drew close as his wandering eyes picked out something that wasn't there before. At the least, he couldn't remember putting it there and it didn't look familiar. The worn leather cover had faint etchings on it that he couldn't quite decipher, but opening to the contents page revealed a sealed letter with his name and a request to be read, written in floral script.

Flipping it over, he examined the seal on the back. A bizarre animal, which resembled both an elephant and a mongoose at the same time, was pressed into a pink wax. A band of text encircled the animal.

"_The House of Lovegood,_" he read aloud. "Luna."

Looking back at the book, there were some twenty chapters listed, however all were blurred.

Carefully, he broke the seal, nearly dropping the letter as a subtle glow overcame it and the creature let out a quiet roar. After taking a moment to regain his composure, he pulled the parchment out and placed it on the table. There was a portrait of Luna in the centre of the page and a single line of text at the top. Although confused, he followed the missive and got out his wand, tapping it on her face.

Immediately, the ink came to life and her once-static eyes blinked while her hand brushed her fringe aside.

"Dear Harry, thank you for opening this letter and following the instructions," the faux-girl said. "I would have sent this as a written letter, but it was of most importance you understand this before you begin, because I dread to have you think I tricked you into anything as much as I dread you becoming entwined with something you wish you hadn't.

"The book is one passed down the Lovegood line from time unknown. Its origins are a mystery and its magic is truly amazing. What I can freely tell you is that it covers magic in other species. A fictional example would be a ritual for summoning a Crumple-Horned Snorkack.

"Magic also acts upon those who use what's inside it and that is why I have to warn you. Any who use any magic from the book will be drawn into assisting the owner of the book, who is me."

The image quieted while she adjusted her hair again, pushing some loose strands behind her ear.

"I have loaned you this book because I truly think it can help you, but it is your decision. If you do use the magic inside then, as I said, you will be drawn into assisting me. Practically, this means that if I were in some kind of danger, you would have an overwhelming urge to find and protect me. I am not sure to what extent, but I am inclined to believe you would go so far as to give your life if that's what it took to protect me.

"That, though, is a passive concern. What you _must_ be most concerned about is that this magic is not for humans – it is not our will that matters. I have selected the chapter on faerie magic for you, because faeries have the ability to move people through the multiverse, taking them from one reality and placing them into another.

"Faeries can do this because they exist in all universes, though not strictly at the same time. They may move you to another if you ask, but you have to know that they do it for their own amusement and have much different ideas of what that is than you and I. If you ask for a universe where your father is alive, they may take you to one where he is Lucius Malfoy; if you ask for a universe where James Potter is alive, they may take you to one where he is in Azkaban for joining He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and betraying your mother and you.

"I'm not saying this to put you off, but just to make sure you know what may result. It's unlikely that they will be that cruel and I think you will be be entertaining for them – if you are, then they'll favour you. Despite all that, it's usual for them to move to the closest universe, which is the most similar universe, so in most cases it should be fine."

Her monologue once more waited for a moment.

"There's not much else for me to say. If you choose to ask the faeries, I wish you the best of luck; if you choose not to, I hope it's because you're managing to work through your grief. Lastly, if you ever need a friend in a far-away place, nearly any Luna you come across will be there for you if you tell her the title of the book."

The ink started to settle, stilling until she was simply a portrait once more.

Harry continued to stare at the page for minutes after the silence prevailed, his mind refusing to work. When thought slowly trickled back, it was a pounding disbelief, as there was no way he could be lucky enough to truly have what she offered in front of him.

Yet, when he looked back at the book, the third chapter was now titled. "_Finding Faeries,_" he whispered. Quickly closing it, he looked at the title. "_Speaking to the Fae._"

Disbelief turned to anticipation as he started turning the pages, the text still impossible to read until he arrived at the third chapter. Slowly, he read, careful to take in everything it told him about the history of the faeries, a history full of mischief and mayhem.

When it finally detailed the ritual, his excitement had him barely able to sit still. On the table, he placed several overlapping sheets of parchment and began tracing the strange symbol drawn in the book. The long, flowing lines danced with each other, forming what looked like a pair of circles woven together with three loops forming a triangular shape in the centre.

Once completed, he took another a deep breath, placed his wand on the centre and then said, "I want to speak to Sirius Black."

Suddenly, the room darkened until he couldn't see anything but the neon-blue glow of the symbol. Beneath him, the chair disappeared, but something else took up his weight, as did the floor moments later. Slowly, it seemed like the unseen room compressed around him, leaving him struggling for breath.

In the blink of an eye, the pressure released and he found himself sitting in a dank room he remembered from his previous summer.

"Oh great, now I'm hallucinating," said the dishevelled man lying back on the bed in front of where Harry sat, seemingly without a care in the world. Harry could only stare back, disbelieving. "Usually I have to start drinking before I start seeing you."

After swallowing the lump in his throat, Harry softly asked, "Sirius?"

"The one and only, now twice as insane and half as mentally stable. Not sure if those two stack or not though, but I'll be sure to ask Moony next time I see him," he casually responded, looking at the ceiling.

"You-you know who I am, right?"

Something changed in Sirius as the body that seemed so comfortable before became rigid. "Of course I do. You're Harry James Potter, son of my best friend James Potter and the love of his life Lily Evans, both deceased. You're my godson that I went to the Ministry to save... And I failed..."

"What do you mean?" Harry whispered.

"You had some kind of vision and thought I was captured by That-Dark-Lord-Guy, so you went off to try and save me with some of your friends. It was a trap though and you all were in big trouble. Snivellus eventually got around to telling Dumbledore and we all went to rescue you all, but by the time we got there..."

He waited, but after Sirius didn't finished, asked, "What was there?"

Sirius sniffed before saying, "Six children were laid out in the atrium, just laying there, so still. When I saw you there, bloodied and broken, I collapsed, crying. Three months later and still I can't close my eyes without seeing you like that."

"Sirius... I'm so sorry."

"What are you sorry for? I'm the one who let you down – I should've gotten there faster, somehow, or at least avenged you by now. Merlin knows Snivellus barely survived when he let slip that he didn't tell us sooner because he thought you were just being a foolish Gryffindor, but the bastard that did that to you... We know Malfoy and my dear cousin Bellatrix were responsible for you, but no-one knows where they're hiding."

Harry couldn't stop watching as Sirius cycled between despair, rage and apathy, the grey eyes seemingly dulling and roaring in the darkness that permeated twelve Grimmauld Place. "I don't blame you," he said, hoping to help.

"Of course you wouldn't – you were the best damn godson I could've asked for!"

Taking his time, Harry inspected this Sirius, finding his face much more gaunt than it had been when they first met, which was worrying considering that that Sirius had spent some dozen years in Azkaban. The bone-like hands and general smell, which was more disgusting than he remembered the rest of the house smelling, were just as telling. "Do you think I want you to starve yourself?"

"Dead people aren't allowed to comment on eating habits."

Wrong-footed by Sirius' snappy reply, it took Harry a bit to properly think. "If... If you had made it in time and saved me, but gotten... Killed... Would you want me to starve myself?"

"I'm not a growing boy, I can afford to punish myself a little."

"You're definitely acting like a child."

"When your entire world collapses around you, then you can tell me how childish I'm being."

Harry opened his mouth to reply, only to realise he couldn't say anything. The death of his Sirius was devastating, but... "I was your entire world?" he quietly asked.

"Of course," Sirius answered, his tone gentler. "Ever since you were born. Lily really surprised me letting me be godfather – I was sure she'd have made Prongs pick Moony since he was the mature one. I promised her, both of them, that I wouldn't let them down, that I'd give up everything for you and I meant it then just as much as I meant it when I went to the Ministry."

Tearing up slightly, Harry rubbed his eyes. "How could you love someone, someone you didn't know, that much?"

"It didn't matter that I didn't know you. I made that promise to people I cared about very much and that was enough of a reason to do anything for you. When you were a baby, I learned you were someone I cared about a lot too. When you were in your third year, I learned you were someone more amazing than I could have hoped. Someone your parents would have been proud to have raised and someone they would be so much more proud of considering who you were despite how you were raised."

"That means a lot to me, more than you could imagine."

"Sorry I didn't tell you all that when you were alive. I thought that mushy stuff was for teenage girls and it's only now that it's too late do I wish I had said it." Sirius reached over to the side table, picking up a glass of water and having a sip from it. "I've gotta say, you're much nicer than most of my hallucinations – they're usually hell-bent on guilt-tripping me to the point of suicide."

"Maybe even your mind thinks you've punished yourself enough."

Sirius scratched his chin while looking down at his guest. "Maybe, but I'd put my money on Tonks trying to cheer me up."

"Would Tonks know that the first time I saw you, once you broke out, was outside my relatives house and you were skulking around as Padfoot?"

"Well, no, but it's not that hard to guess, is it?"

Rolling his eyes, he asked, "What about the two-way mirror, or that you're an unregistered animagus, or that you became an animagus for Professor Lupin, or that you escaped from Hogwarts on Buckbeak?"

"Hey, I find it offensive when you call any of the Marauders 'Professor' – it's unbecoming."

"Fine, fine, but do you still think I'm Tonks?"

Sirius hummed to himself, before jerking up and saying, "Nymphadora!" When Harry failed to react, he gave a shallow chuckle. "Yup, you're definitely not Tonks."

"Mind telling me who that is?"

"Oh, I thought you two would have met at Hogwarts, but I guess seventh years didn't often... Not to mention there was dear sweet Bella and I..." Sirius trailed off.

The glazing of his eyes had Harry concerned. "Padfoot?"

Sirius shook his head. "Sorry, reminiscing. She's my cousin, as is her mother – the only good scions of Blacks left and I'm including myself in that. Good old Andy married a muggle-born she loved and good old Dora joined the aurors – she's doing quite well too. She... She went with us and managed to get Jugson, that's how we know it was Lucius or Bella. Moody called her competent and, having trained under him before the, well, the last war, I know that's the highest compliment he gives."

"Sounds like I'm not the only one you care about," Harry commented.

"No, I guess not. She had loving parents though. You, well, you needed someone... Is it horrible that I'm, in some twisted way, glad you had such a miserable life, since it meant I knew what you went through and made you so happy to have me?"

Frowning, he asked, "What do you mean?"

Sirius let out a raspy chuckle. "I'm the first Black that didn't go to Slytherin or Ravenclaw in some centuries. Of course, my parents barely acknowledged me before that, but there was definitely a lot more tension when I got back after my first year. They'd even sent me an owl telling me that, 'It would be best to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas.' I was out of that, er, this house as soon as I turned sixteen and I was happier to be rid of them."

"I know that feeling. Of course, I don't think my relatives would've cared if I was sorted into Slytherin rather than Gryffindor."

"There's just no pleasing some people," Sirius concurred and then spent a while inspecting Harry. "A lot of people accused me of confusing you for James, but I never did... But, sometimes, I forgot you weren't me. You weren't the little boy who wanted attention and played silly pranks to get it, the little boy who didn't understand the difference between funny and cruel.

"You, well, I guess you were your own person. Why wouldn't you be? Lily didn't have a chance to make you a rule-abiding bookworm, James didn't have a chance to make you a rule-avoiding prankster, Remus didn't have a chance to make you a rule-avoiding bookworm and I didn't have the chance to corrupt you. I'm so proud of the amazing person you were, better than I could've hoped to be if I'd gone through what you did."

The whirling emotions Sirius had been showing settled down. "Thank you; most people just tell me how much I look like my dad, though they sometimes tell me I have my mum's eyes."

"If a man can't tell his dead godson how special he was, what good is it to be a wizard... That doesn't make sense, but the sentiment's there."

Harry, for the first time in months that he could remember, properly laughed, which set Sirius off too, their amusement slowly and naturally trailing off.

"When I found out the truth about you, I thought I was looking forward to having someone like a father... It's only now that it's too late that I've realised I just wanted someone who loved me unconditionally, who would care about me and listen to what I wanted rather than what they thought was best for me."

"Well, you've got your parents for that now and I've got my bottle of Ogden's finest," Sirius muttered, reaching over for a nearly empty bottle of whiskey.

"Er, yeah," Harry lied automatically, his mind grinding to a halt as he debated whether or not to play the alternate universe card.

Watching Sirius take a gulp of the amber liquid, he realised it would be pointless since he was going to leave and Sirius already doubted his existence.

"I didn't tell you how much I appreciated, no, loved you, did I?" Harry asked. "It meant so much to have you supporting me when everyone was telling me I was too young and stuff."

Sirius waved him off, saying, "Old enough to face a dragon, old enough to know that... Actually, what does go on at Order meetings? All I can remember is that Hagrid and I went to the giants and a lot of people have died, are in the process of dying and are likely to die soon."

Chuckling, Harry shook his head. "You know, I can't remember a thing either."

There was a comfortable silence as Sirius emptied the remnants of the bottle into his cup and sipped away. Finally, he said, "Thanks, I feel better than I have in months, ignoring the whole thanking a figment of my own imagination."

Harry smiled, glad to see Sirius doing to the same. "Same here, except I'm pretty sure both of us are real."

"You say potato, I say tomato," Sirius countered.

"That's not how the phrase goes," Harry replied, amused, before saying, "Goodbye, Sirius," and whispering, "I want to go home."

Darkness pounced upon him, bringing his vision down to the reappeared symbol. The invisible surrounding pushed against him, crushing him, then released. Taking a deep breath, he was back in his room, the digital clock beside his bed telling him that not a minute had passed.

Looking back at the table, he watched as the symbol faded from the haphazard covering of sheets. Bringing his eyes so close his nose was practically touching the table, the parchment showed no flaw from where the ink had been.

Sitting back in his chair, lolling his head back and watching the ceiling, he thought he felt better than he had in a month or so. Luna's warnings caressed the back of his mind, but he couldn't help but know that it was worth it.

After spending nearly an hour relishing in the much appeased grief, he started tidying the desk up.

It was only when he closed the book and placed it deep in his trunk that he realised something.

The book still showed him the symbol.


End file.
